Effects of Land Use Change on Soil Aggregate Stability and Erodibility in the Karst Region of Southwest China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of “Effects of land use change on soil aggregate stability and erodibility in the Karst Region of Southwest China” submitted to Agronomy by Li et al.

There are grammatical mistakes and syntax/punctuation/subscripts/superscrits errors in the manuscript. The manuscript needs editing regarding English writing throughout the manuscript.

Motivation of the authors is understandable. Novelty of the research is not emphasized. Research question is not clear. Robustness/soundness of the study, analysis techniques and adapted methodology are not clear. They must be justified in the manuscript.

Fig 1 caption is not adequate to describe. It needs reidentifying.

Variables in the Eqs. 1 and 2 are not given in the line 166.

(SOM) should be given after full form in the line 171.

SN1 is into introduced in the Eq. 4.

Why did the authors adapt the normal distribution of soil properties?

Authors should introduce Canoco 5.0.

What are 999 Monte Carlo test permutations? Is it number of Monte Carlo simulation/resampling?

Why did the author select this number of resampling?

Results must be independent of the number of resampling. Hence, the authors run their model using various resampling number.

It is not clear why did the authors perform Monte Carlo analysis.

Legends of the figures are not understandable. Dimensions may be given.

Pearson correlation coefficient is utilized to determine the correlation of the variables. What do the authors think about the multi-collinearity problems of the variables. Do you consider all the variables in soil erodibility? Please explain in detail. Authors should mention this issue in Discussion section.

What do you think about uncertainty problem in your analysis?  How would you take into account uncertainty in your analysis? Would you adapt any uncertainty measure in your analysis? Authors should mention this issue in Discussion section.

W>2.0mm, W2-1mm, W1-0.5mm should be introduced.

In Figs. 6 and 7 Chinese letter needs correction.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There are grammatical mistakes and syntax/punctuation/subscripts/superscrits errors in the manuscript. The manuscript needs editing regarding English writing throughout the manuscript.

Author Response

 

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

My suggestions regarding your article are given below.

Abstract Part:

1-Please start with a lowercase letter after the conjunction.

2-It would be better if the purpose of the study was emphasized instead of this sentence "However, The 10 factors affecting soil stability and erodibility in the karst landscapes under changing land use dura-11 tions are still uncertain" written in the abstract

3-Please write the meaning of MWD, GMD, and SSI values.

Introduction Part:

In the introduction, much information is given on the factors affecting the structural stability and erodibility of soil. This information can be simplified to make the introduction section more fluid. Additionally, more detailed information can be given about the Karst Region of Southwest China, which was selected for the study.

Materials and Methods Part:

1-Reference should be given when defining your experimental area. It should also be referenced in climate data.

2-What do the authors mean with this sentence "A 30-year developmental scale of different land use types was selected". There is the 6th year and the 38th year in the selected parameters. They should explain this sentence more clear

3. Please check this sentence”The 203 pattern of BD across the three soil layers for the five land use types followed the order: 204 Y7-RGL＞Y38-Y+B＞Y38-Y＞Y6-JGL＞Y6-ZR. Y38-Y＞Y6-JGL＞Y6-ZR.” Also, there are word errors in the article. Please check all sections.

4-Information can be given about practices such as fertilization and soil cultivation applied in the cultivation of cultivated plants in the selected areas. In the discussion section, it has been reported in studies conducted by different researchers that such practices affect the physical and chemical properties of the soil.  The discussion would be much more descriptive if such information was available regarding the field of study.

Discussion Part:

 

1-If detailed information about the trial areas is given, it can be compared better with previous studies.

2.Additionally, important results obtained from the applications should be discussed in detail among themselves.

Best regards

 

Author Response

 

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Manuscript ID agronomy-3089199 submitted to agronomy titled “Effects of land use change on soil aggregate stability and erodibility in the Karst Region of Southwest China.”

 Review:

 The theme of the article is relevant and of interest more to the region where the study was developed, due to the peculiar and particular characteristics of the study area.

The text has serious writing and typing problems, which requires considerable improvement to bring the text in line with the editorial standards of the journal agronomy. Several of these issues are noted in the attached article.

In the text, acronyms are used to identify the experimental plots studied. In this aspect, they should standardize the way these acronyms are expressed, which can cause confusion for readers.

The need to standardize the units of length m and km, in the text, and miles on the scale of Figure 1.

In relation to the summary, the last sentence brings a conclusion that goes far beyond the experimental limitations of the work developed and needs to be duly corrected.

Keywords should not contain terms from the article title.

Regarding bibliographic citations in the text, they need a rigorous review, as there are citations that do not correspond to the numbers cited in the text. This problem can cause a series of chain errors, which cannot be checked by the reviewer or editors.

Regarding bibliographic citations, the writing should be adapted to comply with the Journal's standards.

The writing pattern of every article must be unique. It appears that parts of the article were written differently than others.

The conclusions seem more like a continuation of the discussions and should be more objective and without so many acronyms.

References must be carefully reviewed and corrected and must comply with the journal's referencing standard, which requires that the name of the periodicals be abbreviated. Some problems with referencing are highlighted in the annex.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors responded to changes requests regarding the content.

But the formatting still needs adjustments to adapt to the journal's standards, such as: 1) Terms of the title should not be repeated in the keywords, as this would increase the search terms in research on the topic and 2) Referencing must comply with the standards of the journal and comply with these rules in all references, as the journal requests that the names of the journals in which they were published be abbreviated. But most references do not meet this standard required by agronomy.

There are also typing problems in the text.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf